Groundhog Day, Ed Wood, The Big Lebowski, Dark City, and 12 Monkeys. What do these movies have in common?

They were all made in the 1990s and represented a middle-level film—neither franchise nor family fare. “That’s what we’re missing at the theater nowadays,” said Thomas Doherty, the Brandeis University professor and author whose work frequently appears in the Hollywood Reporter.

“The middle-level melodrama or thriller used to be well attended at the movie house. Now it goes straight to Netflix,” said Doherty. “We’re missing the smaller films. That product is in jeopardy,” he said.

Also in jeopardy is the practice of going to the movies. Time will tell whether people will continue to want to see films in the company of their fellow human beings, the professor noted. “There will always be a niche audience. Fans and film buffs will still gather to watch certain films, but most now watch films at home,” he said.

Doherty related how Hollywood faced a previous challenge when it came to theater attendance in the 1930s. “The Great Depression traumatized Hollywood. The movie industry thought that it was immune to any kind of downturn,” he said.

Radio had entered the picture, piping, for the first time, entertainment directly into the home. Then there was the little matter of expendable income. Folks were out of work and relying on breadlines just to get by. Even the small cost of a film became an extravagance for many.

But Hollywood got through it. The question is now whether the theater can stage another rebound at a time when the studios own the content and send serial dramas directly into the home? 

Doherty pointed out that going to the movies used to be part of a courtship ritual. When a guy asked a girl to go out, he let his date decide on the picture to see. So you had a lot of movies designed to appeal to women, said Doherty, questioning whether that ritual is still in effect.

Looking ahead, the challenge for the theater operator will be coming up with an experience you can’t get at home, said Doherty.

Show Trial (cover pictured above) is a book that Doherty wrote in 2018 about the congressional hearings looking into Communist associations in Hollywood that brought about blacklists. “It’s hard to say what impact having so many screenwriters and movie people unable to work for 10 years had on the entertainment industry. We just don’t know what could have been produced in that time,” he said.

What we do know is that there were definite tragedies among blacklisted individuals, said Doherty. Marguerite Roberts, who worked at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, had been one of the most respected and highest-paid screenwriters in Hollywood, he noted. In 1951, Roberts was called before the U. S. House Committee on Un-American Activities. Even though she merely accompanied her husband to meetings, when she declined to answer questions about being a member of the Communist Party, she spent the next 10 years unemployed, said Doherty.

Finally, in 1961, Roberts found work again. In 1969, Roberts wrote the screenplay for True Grit, a film that won John Wayne his only Oscar. Wayne raved about the script that Roberts produced, Doherty said.

Doherty has a new book coming out in April on the rise of archival documentaries in the 1930s. How Film Became History focuses on how most of us learn our history—through moving pictures—got started.